paying the caretaker for his services, they not only made him pay costs of upkeep, including replacing busted gas pipes, etc., but they made him pay interest (rent to stay there). Not only that, he had to pay the taxes for the owner, and keep it insured at his own cost with the credit insurance (also fire, storm, hail, and what-have-you insurance added); so that should he fail to pay the loan, or should the property be destroyed by fire, they could just take over the lot, and the insurance companies would have to pay the difference between what the "owner" owed and the value of the lot. Now that is not just an isolated case. Hundreds of billions of just such "monetary" values exist. Are we a home-owning Nation? Has home-ownership increased in last 10 years, during this building boom? No for a man does not own his home until the last note is paid; and if you could see the figures, you would find that the note holders' title is flawless, and that the home owners' investment in cash is infinitesimally small compared to the volume of investment obligations the bankers hold. They do hold them in most part, because these "home boys" — these fellows whom we grew up with, and who we thought were just common fellows like ourselves — were developing acres of residential property- $6,000,000, $20 million, $30 million projects — on borrowed "capital" which they got from the banks.
Uncle Sam Becomes the Underwriter Well, during the late 20's boom, bankers got a belly full of "little" investments, the selling of houses to little folks. The crash left them with too many of these notes un-collectable, and the boys just moved out and there was no recourse worth taking. So following World War II, after finding Uncle Sam the biggest sap in Christendom, and that his Congressmen would go along with anything the bankers asked for, the bankers decided deeds of trust and first mortgage notes were not good enough; so they went to Uncle Sam (Barney did again — he is now 88, and seems good for 88 more years) and said, "We must not forget that these veterans have faced shot and shell, placed our flag atop of a mountain in Iwo Jima and their buddies died on many battlefields, so we can't be too good to them; they came